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Brie Larson on Researching 'Room': "I Didn't Want to Get Into Some Sort of Invasive Crime Tale"

"I had been given some videos of the very rare times these girls had done public interviews, and they just broke my heart and made me so angry."

"I'm a big believer in privacy," Roomstar Brie Larson told The Hollywood Reporter during the Oscar Actress Roundtable. "I didn't feel it was my place to invade their space," she said, referring to real-life victims of abduction and kidnapping. Her character in the film, Ma, is abducted as a teenager and held captive in a single room, but the actress declined to speak to victims. "Ultimately what the story is, is universal."

"I wasn't pretty enough to play the popular girl, I wasn't mousy enough to play the mousy girl, so I never fit in," she said of her early career. "I would get close, but I wasn't a cliche, so I never got anywhere with anything, and it was really painful."

"Everybody has dreams," she told the roundtable, but the constant rejection forced Larson to wonder if she was on the right path. "It's like you're constantly questioning yourself with those 'no's. Is this another moment that I take and use this toward the craft of another time, or am I just delusional? Am I just completely insane?"

Larson went on to say that every time she has pulled back from acting throughout the years, she has felt pulled back to the work — a sensation she finds the most rewarding: "Feeling like you're getting 'the call' is what drives me to act."

The full Actress Roundtable will air on Close Up With The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday, Jan. 10, at 11 a.m. ET on SundanceTV.